A Cold Hearth

[Leanne]

Four a.m., and the farmyard reveille has rallied the children;
it is dark, and Mother insists that lights are used only for necessary tasks.  Finding
slippers must be done by touch, as mats do little to stop the winter seeping into bare feet.  

The kitchen fire shows no glow of coals.  Father, drunk, forgot to bank it
again.  Little James rakes the cold ash out of the way while Jenny fetches kindling from the box by the door.  
In the copper on the ledge, last night's stew has congealed in rebuke to Mother, 
who did not salt it satisfactorily.  The tea in the kettle has ice on the top.  

The children set the teepee and stuff it with last week's news.  Jenny warms her hands
under her arms -- matches don't grow on trees, says Father, and one mustn't 
waste them with fumbling fingers.  

She leans in, ready to strike, and takes a breath.  The cold hearth smells of inevitability,
accusation and despair.

The match sparks, and it begins anew.

[ellajam]

[amiwrite]

This is definitely unlike anything I've read on forums such as these, it's interesting and paints a very pretty picture.

[tectak]

Four a.m., and the farmyard reveille has rallied the children; Unsure on "rallied". I see the intent as "gathered" but not as " revitalised"...I feel you mean more of the former than the latter which makes the next lines less poignant. Suggestion would be "stirred"...more pedestrian but less ambiguous.
it is dark, and Mother insists that lights are used only for necessary tasks.  Finding Only mothers capitalise mother...but of course, that is Father's name for her....but the children? No. On balance if mother and father get capitals, so should children.
slippers must be done by touch, as mats do little to stop the winter sinking into bare feet.   There is a big disconnect here. It is that consequential shade of meaning implied by the bloody "as" word. It incorrectly relates to the "finding by touch" and not to the "mats do little". Do you seee?  You only just get away with sinking upwards. Winter soaks in to bare feet. Winter slinks in to bare feet. Winter sneaks in to bare feet.

The kitchen fire shows no glow of coals.  Father, drunk, forgot to bank it
again.  Little James rakes the cold ash out of the way while Jenny gathers kindling from the box by the door. Jenny brings,  Jenny fetches. You do not gather wine from the cellar or logs from the store or bread from the bin or cheese from the board or milk from the fridge or....ahem!
In the copper on the ledge, last night's stew has congealed in rebuke to Mother,  I ask because I do not know...does unsatisfactory (too much, too little?) seasoning produce spontaneous congealing or is this a vengeful stew?
who did not salt it satisfactorily.  The tea in the kettle has ice on the top.   If you mean this, it is cute...but kettles boil water, teapots contain tea....I was brought up in a PROPER council house with OUR OWN teapot.

The children set the teepee and stuff it with last week's news.  Jenny warms her hands I am tired. I see the teepee of sticks in the grate/hearth...I like the image, but it has very contrived and, dare I say it, misplaced relevence. Is it some Oz thing?
under her arms -- matches don't grow on trees, says Father, and one mustn't 
waste them with fumbling fingers.   Charming cameo...even with the dashed dash. Is this a new way of indicating that narrative follows? Nope? Why, then?

She leans in, ready to strike, and takes a breath.  The cold hearth smells of inevitability, Who she? You do not say. You end incongruously on breath (period) and begin again with not a new, or old for that matter, sentence. Are you drunk, woman
accusation and despair.

The match sparks, and it begins anew. Hmmm. A little twee, if I may be so bold. Not sure how to spell twee.

Hi leanne,
Would you take offence if I said it was nice? Naw. Thought not. Nice.
Best,
tectak

[Brownlie]

Four a.m., and the farmyard reveille has rallied the children;
it is dark, and Mother insists that lights are used only for necessary tasks.  Finding -- Its possible that "insists" could become a key phrase here. Though, if Mother becomes a stereotypical mother than there could be problems.
slippers must be done by touch, as mats do little to stop the winter sinking into bare feet.  -- I think this may be hindered by a lack of details. What part of the foot exactly, what type of mat, etc. I think the further you go down in detail the more interesting this would be.


The kitchen fire shows no glow of coals.  Father, drunk, forgot to bank it
again.  Little James rakes the cold ash out of the way while Jenny gathers kindling from the box by the door.  - "Little James" as a phrase runs the risk of the semantically destructive hyperbole found in "Tiny Tim."
In the copper on the ledge, last night's stew has congealed in rebuke to Mother, -- I like the idea of the accusatory homestead, but I feel a formulation of the idea has not yet been fleshed out here. I could see the wintry hearth becoming a conception in a character's head, or I could see an ostentatiously supernatural house that would be somewhat comical (such is the insensitive nature of the greedy reader).
who did not salt it satisfactorily.  The tea in the kettle has ice on the top.  

The children set the teepee and stuff it with last week's news.  Jenny warms her hands -- Now, setting the teepee could become its own poem.  As it is here, I'm not sure how common the practice is.
under her arms -- matches don't grow on trees, says Father, and one mustn't 
waste them with fumbling fingers.  

She leans in, ready to strike, and takes a breath.  The cold hearth smells of inevitability,
accusation and despair. -- You could link these feelings with a tactile detail.  In some scent that seems symbolize this type of domesticity.

The match sparks, and it begins anew. -- I mean there is definitely some technique here, you go full circle from the mother to the daughter. So you have this Ethan Frome like cycle of horrible farm life.

Well, I wouldn't necessarily call the poem nice, but I think some good points are brought up above. I think the ice in the tea seems to symbolize a failed domestic duty, hence the accusatory hearth that appears later. I think a problem with this poem is that it totters between a poem about a maternal figure and a poem about the working class. From what I gather, the two genres (if we can call them genres) are slightly different.  I will say, however, there is some subtle technique here.

[Leanne]

Thank you all for your comments.  Tom, I have made a couple of semantic improvements based on your suggestions, thank you.  

Tom, when the rooster crows in the dead of winter and you're supposed to be out of bed, breakfasted, dressed and ready to catch the bus for the two-hour ride to school, you bloody rally, I assure you!  One is instantly "revived" from sleep to wakefulness.  It always amazed me how much volume that little bantam rooster could achieve.

Mother is Mother.  Father is Father.  Father doesn't call Mother Mother, he calls her much less savoury names.  I would capitalise it if the mother was instead Mum, so it must be Mother.  I would not capitalise it if I'd said "their mother", but I didn't, so I have 

The stew, suffering savoury deficiency, is uneaten.  Thus it has been left to congeal.  I didn't think this unclear but perhaps it is.  Bully for you and your Mr Fancypants separate kettle and teapot -- we couldn't afford such a thing.  Indeed, I was well into school years before we got an actual kettle instead of just using a billy.  I still prefer billy tea though.  

We always called it "setting the teepee" -- such that I thought the image was fairly self-explanatory.  That's what it looks like, after all, politically correct or not.  We watched a lot of Westerns  Every morning, if the fire hadn't been banked, we would set it up in exactly that fashion and relight.  I've done Jenny and James a favour by allowing them a kindling box indoors -- ours was in a shed about 50m from the house and I remember several trips in my dressing gown and gumboots, crunching over the frost.  Often I'd find that the kindling was running low and would have to employ the tomahawk, which is the reason I learned the hands-under-the-armpits trick, because you don't want to slip with that sharp little beastie.

Since Jenny is the only "she" with any action, I feel perfectly justified in using the pronoun.  It doesn't confuse me and I suspect it doesn't really confuse you either.  The next sentence begins and ends just fine -- or would if you hadn't typed over it.

Brownlie, I have no idea why a maternal figure and a poem about the working class should be mutually exclusive.  Do working classes not have mothers?  Also, I am not sure what you mean by "stereotypical mother" -- perhaps you could clarify?

[Brownlie]

Thank you all for your comments.  Tom, I have made a couple of semantic improvements based on your suggestions, thank you.  

Tom, when the rooster crows in the dead of winter and you're supposed to be out of bed, breakfasted, dressed and ready to catch the bus for the two-hour ride to school, you bloody rally, I assure you!  One is instantly "revived" from sleep to wakefulness.  It always amazed me how much volume that little bantam rooster could achieve.

Mother is Mother.  Father is Father.  Father doesn't call Mother Mother, he calls her much less savoury names.  I would capitalise it if the mother was instead Mum, so it must be Mother.  I would not capitalise it if I'd said "their mother", but I didn't, so I have 

The stew, suffering savoury deficiency, is uneaten.  Thus it has been left to congeal.  I didn't think this unclear but perhaps it is.  Bully for you and your Mr Fancypants separate kettle and teapot -- we couldn't afford such a thing.  Indeed, I was well into school years before we got an actual kettle instead of just using a billy.  I still prefer billy tea though.  

We always called it "setting the teepee" -- such that I thought the image was fairly self-explanatory.  That's what it looks like, after all, politically correct or not.  We watched a lot of Westerns  Every morning, if the fire hadn't been banked, we would set it up in exactly that fashion and relight.  I've done Jenny and James a favour by allowing them a kindling box indoors -- ours was in a shed about 50m from the house and I remember several trips in my dressing gown and gumboots, crunching over the frost.  Often I'd find that the kindling was running low and would have to employ the tomahawk, which is the reason I learned the hands-under-the-armpits trick, because you don't want to slip with that sharp little beastie.

Since Jenny is the only "she" with any action, I feel perfectly justified in using the pronoun.  It doesn't confuse me and I suspect it doesn't really confuse you either.  The next sentence begins and ends just fine -- or would if you hadn't typed over it.

Brownlie, I have no idea why a maternal figure and a poem about the working class should be mutually exclusive.  Do working classes not have mothers?  Also, I am not sure what you mean by "stereotypical mother" -- perhaps you could clarify?

Well, I wasn't sure whether the poem was meant to be autobiographical or didactic. If the poem was a piece of fiction written from a point of view influenced by say Plath and Levine (best example I can think of at the moment) then there would be problems by bleeding the two together. If this were a fictional poem about a mother from a certain community there may be the danger of people imbibing the idea of a Mother and applying it as a template or something on which they create all individuals on. That was the philosophical idea anyhow.

[Leanne]

I should think it unlikely that I'd write anything influenced by Plath or Levine.

And no, it's not autobiographical either, though a lot of detail is drawn from memory. We don't use the term "working class" in Australia much. We were just dirt poor

[Leanne]

PS. Didactic? I would actually hate to think that anything I wrote falls into that category... but maybe it means something different where you're from...

[ellajam]

Hi, this hit the spot for me. It brought me to the cold morning when children are expected to fend for themselves. The notes below are only to point out why I like it so much.

Four a.m., and the farmyard reveille has rallied the children;
it is dark, and Mother insists that lights are used only for necessary tasks.  Finding
slippers must be done by touch, as mats do little to stop the winter seeping into bare feet.  
L1 made me hear the rooster at the moment of barest light, they don't wait for true sunup. L2 says poverty, fuel is expensive and/or hard to come by. L3: It's cooold.

The kitchen fire shows no glow of coals.  Father, drunk, forgot to bank it
again.  Little James rakes the cold ash out of the way while Jenny fetches kindling from the box by the door.  
In the copper on the ledge, last night's stew has congealed in rebuke to Mother, 
who did not salt it satisfactorily.  The tea in the kettle has ice on the top.  
Father's drunk and if Mother isn't also she's unhappy or distracted enough to not even care about being a good cook. Salt preserves food, as does keeping it cooking for days, she's failed on both.

The children set the teepee and stuff it with last week's news.  Jenny warms her hands
under her arms -- matches don't grow on trees, says Father, and one mustn't 
waste them with fumbling fingers.  
I only paused on teepee for the time it took to finish the sentence, then I clearly saw the kindling stuffed with paper, probably a serious reach for young children. It's so cold she can't trust her grip.


She leans in, ready to strike, and takes a breath.  The cold hearth smells of inevitability,
accusation and despair.
Her face into the box, breathing in the scent that is the opposite what we dream of: warmth, stability, support.


The match sparks, and it begins anew.
Another day.

Thanks for posting this. As a response to a comment that a cold hearth has no smell, this poem was perfect for me, it made something worthwhile from what seemed like nonsense to me, and I appreciate that.

[Brownlie]

PS.  Didactic?  I would actually hate to think that anything I wrote falls into that category... but maybe it means something different where you're from...

Generally, didactic is pretty annoying. Occasionally, people can accomplish things but that seems to be a different kind of task.

[Leanne]

Thanks ella

I wonder if some confusion is caused by a difference in fireplaces -- in our living room we had a pot-bellied stove that used to require lighting as well, but never until well into the afternoon as the room wasn't used during the day (except on weekends, and then only if there was a blizzard or something preventing us from playing outside). In the kitchen, though, we had a big open fire. It was probably six feet across, with brick shelves on either side to rest things on. On one side was the kettle, always full -- in the winter, when the pipes were frozen, this meant several trips out into the snow, which was always fun at first but soon got a bit tiresome. On the other side was a big copper pot with lots of dents in it, waiting for porridge or whatever else would fill it for the day. Sometimes we'd be too tired to clean it out at night time, so we'd wake up to a blob of leftover goop that was pretty revolting to remove.

Cold ash has a very distinct smell. Fireplaces in my memory, warm or not, always smell at least a little of sap (mostly eucalyptus for me) and charcoal. There are lingering scents of food or tea. To say that they smell of nothing seems to me just ignorant.

(I actually loved our fireplace. I would pull a chair up close and sit with my legs up on the wall, reading for hours. I'd have to change sides fairly often because it got rather hot. I never really minded setting and lighting the fire either, and always ended up being the nominated firestarter at Girl Guides later on. I quite liked chopping things up as well.)

[tectak]

Thank you all for your comments.  Tom, I have made a couple of semantic improvements based on your suggestions, thank you.  

Tom, when the rooster crows in the dead of winter and you're supposed to be out of bed, breakfasted, dressed and ready to catch the bus for the two-hour ride to school, you bloody rally, I assure you!  One is instantly "revived" from sleep to wakefulness.  It always amazed me how much volume that little bantam rooster could achieve.

Mother is Mother.  Father is Father.  Father doesn't call Mother Mother, he calls her much less savoury names.  I would capitalise it if the mother was instead Mum, so it must be Mother.  I would not capitalise it if I'd said "their mother", but I didn't, so I have  ...and Excel calls this a circular arguement

The stew, suffering savoury deficiency, is uneaten.  Thus it has been left to congeal.  I didn't think this unclear but perhaps it is.  Bully for you and your Mr Fancypants separate kettle and teapot -- we couldn't afford such a thing.  Indeed, I was well into school years before we got an actual kettle instead of just using a billy.  I still prefer billy tea though.  

We always called it "setting the teepee" -- such that I thought the image was fairly self-explanatory.  That's what it looks like, after all, politically correct or not.  We watched a lot of Westerns  Every morning, if the fire hadn't been banked, we would set it up in exactly that fashion and relight.  I've done Jenny and James a favour by allowing them a kindling box indoors -- ours was in a shed about 50m from the house and I remember several trips in my dressing gown and gumboots, crunching over the frost.  Often I'd find that the kindling was running low and would have to employ the tomahawk, which is the reason I learned the hands-under-the-armpits trick, because you don't want to slip with that sharp little beastie.

Since Jenny is the only "she" with any action, I feel perfectly justified in using the pronoun.  It doesn't confuse me and I suspect it doesn't really confuse you either.  The next sentence begins and ends just fine -- or would if you hadn't typed over it.

Brownlie, I have no idea why a maternal figure and a poem about the working class should be mutually exclusive.  Do working classes not have mothers?  Also, I am not sure what you mean by "stereotypical mother" -- perhaps you could clarify?

[just mercedes]

Many memories from this poem - I remember how startled I was by commercial fire starters, how incredibly decadent they seemed! I still don't use them - I build my teepee, and never need to do it twice. This could have been my grandmother's home. And yes, cold hearth is symbolic of the cold at the heart of the family portrayed in your poem. The fire renewed gives me some hope.

'must be done by touch' sounds a little clunky to me.

Thanks for posting this - i think it was written as a protest against the comment that a dead hearth has no smell - it's always amazing to me, where poems come from.

[Leanne]

That was precisely the impetus -- a rather ignorant comment from someone whose experience with fireplaces probably extends only to those posh electric things with "flame effect".

I, too, have never had to take two goes to get the fire started, and I hate the smell of commercial firestarters. They don't save any time if you know what you're doing, and I swear they flavour the food. Could be just my imagination, of course.

I am absolutely open to alternative phrasing for the 'touch' line -- I just haven't figured anything out yet but I agree that it's cumbersome.

Many thanks.